Toss your tea bags but don’t distort history

March about tomorrow, shout slogans and wave picket signs. Toss tea bags in the air. Dress up like Mohawk Indians if you like. Whatever silly, senseless act you can think of to protest the through-the-roof taxation levels that will be required to pay for financial bailouts of banks and automakers and the various redistributionist taxes to pay for all those social entitlements.

But don’t compare this popular pique with the Boston Tea Party of Dec. 16, 1773.

The minuscule 3 pence tax on tea delivered by the East India Company replaced a number of higher taxes and essentially made East India’s tea cheaper than the black market tea smuggled by American merchant ships. The protest was on principle, objecting to Parliament's contention it had the right to tax Americans without representation.

Make your point. Make it with speeches and essays and voter action. But don’t misconstrue history, please.

Perhaps a quote from the crafter of our Constitution James Madison might be in order:

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."

Or one from Thomas Jefferson:

"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated."